The determination of whether sexually explicit materials fit that definition will be made by the warden at each prison, said Brian Garnett, a department spokesman.

"Nudity is nudity for the purposes of this ban," he said.

"This material is detrimental to the safety and security of our institutions, to our efforts to rehabilitate the offender population," Arnone said. "It creates a hostile work environment for our staff, which is exposed to it on a daily basis."

Inmates who violate the policy will have their materials taken away and be written up in an internal disciplinary report, Garnett said.

Although the specifics are still being worked out, Garnett said inmates who are written up face possible loss of commissary privileges, visits from family or the ability to receive phone calls.

The agency has been considering the ban for more than a year, Garnett said. He said Arnone established a task force to help develop the policy. He declined to speculate on whether the ban might face a legal challenge.

"Similar regulations have been used to censor an image of the Sistine Chapel, newspapers and magazines with lingerie ads and the novel 'Ulysses,'" Schneider said.

Elizabeth Marsh, a law school professor at Quinnipiac University, said there's a possibility the ban could be challenged under the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of expression.

"The question with a First Amendment challenge is: Is the language the department uses in creating this ban overly broad?" Marsh said.

New Jersey was successful in a limited ban of sexually explicit material in a 1999 case that made it to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, she said.

In Waterman v. Farmer, New Jersey officials sought to ban pornography among inmates who were convicted sex offenders. The court upheld the New Jersey ban in that case.

A Michigan inmate last week filed a lawsuit challenging that state's rules on sexually explicit material in prisons, saying his civil rights were being violated.

Kyle Richards filed a handwritten lawsuit in which he claims that the ban on pornographic material in the Michigan county jail where he's housed has forced him to compromise his standards of living and subjects him to "sexual and sensory deprivation."